Ireland's prime minister has launched an unprecedented attack on the Vatican, accusing it of downplaying the rape and torture of Irish children by clerical sex abusers.

Enda Kenny said in parliament that the Cloyne report, released on 13 July, had exposed the Vatican's attempt to frustrate the inquiry into child sex abuse.

During a debate on the fallout from the Cloyne findings, the taoiseach said the report had illuminated the dysfunction and elitism still dominant in the Vatican.

Kenny told the Dáil on Wednesday that Rome seemed more interested in upholding the church's power and reputation than confronting the abuse of Irish children by its priests and religious orders.

The Vatican's attitude to investigations in Cloyne, which covers County Cork, was the "polar opposite of the radicalism, the humility and the compassion that the church had been founded on", he said.

Kenny said the rape and torture of children had been downplayed or "managed" to uphold the institution's power and reputation.

The all-party motion being debated in the Dáil "deplores the Vatican's intervention which contributed to the undermining of child protection frameworks and guidelines of the Irish state and the Irish bishops".

One of the most damning findings of the Cloyne report was that the diocese failed to report nine out of 15 complaints made against priests, which "very clearly should have been reported".

The report, coming after a string of inquiries into Catholic clerical sex abuse across Ireland, has set the Irish government on a collision course with the church.

Earlier on Wednesday a Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, speaking in a personal capacity, said nothing in the advice given by the papal nuncio to Ireland in 1997 encouraged bishops to break Irish laws.

The Vatican's advice to Irish bishops on child protection policies could not be interpreted as an invitation to cover up abuse cases, he said.